0% financing is advertised on a car windshield at a Detroit dealership in 2001.

By Paul Sancya, AP

During the past couple of years, automakers flooded the airwaves with ads proclaiming 0% financing on some of their best-known brands. Today, those 0% deals are harder to find — and they usually cover only shorter-term loans.

Auto Web site CarsDirect.com surveyed eight popular models from General Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler that last year all offered 0% financing during the typical five-year loan period.

Last week, the best interest rates offered by manufacturers for five-year loans in the Los Angeles, Orlando and New York markets checked were mostly 2.9% to 3.9%. To get 0%, a buyer would have to opt for a 36-month loan.

There were some exceptions: Dodge was offering 0% financing on its minivans, Ram 1500 Quad Cab pickup and Jeep Liberty for a full 60-month term.

But in other cases, 0% deals have dried up. A Ford Expedition buyer can still opt for $3,000 cash incentives — same as last year — but the best financing is no longer 0% over 60 months. It's 1.9% for 36 months.

For the most part, "Zero percent is all gone," Ford spokesman Dave Reuter says. "We have so much new product out there, we don't feel we need to offer 0%."

Toyota, which had been offering 0% financing deals on its Tundra pickup, has jettisoned the goose egg as well.

Higher interest rates are partly to blame. The yield on a 10-year Treasury note was 4.47% Thursday, up from 3.68% on the same day last year, and it has since risen to 4.63%.

But Mark McCready, pricing expert for CarsDirect.com, says the bigger problem may be that buyers no longer respond. "Zero percent is a stale message," he says.

Manufacturers aren't as quick to throw 0% financing deals at buyers because they are taking more care to pinpoint incentives, adds George Peterson of auto consulting group AutoPacific.

GM spokeswoman Elaine Redd says the automaker now takes a "laser-beam approach" on incentives. Zero-percent financing "isn't something we've done across the board year after year."